Apple Introduces Streaming Music Previews Without iTunes

Apple is enabling users to listen to 30-second song-previews as part of its web-based iTunes preview service.

The preview service was originally introduced, without the streaming, in November 2009 to allow visitors to review lists of songs available within the iTunes store without having to install or open up the application.

With the addition of streaming Quicktime previews, as reported on CNET, this could be the first of many steps towards a fully web-based streaming service following Apple’s acquisition of popular web-based music service Lala as reported on The Next Web last month.

Previews for non-music iTunes content have yet to be added. Nevertheless, this move marks a significant step towards a full web-based music streaming service for Apple who has previously forced visitors to install iTunes in order to preview music tracks.